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He hasn't literally made the Buckeyes pound stone, but the fact that Ohio State dubs one of its annual winter conditioning workouts the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" tells you all you need to know about his tactics and desire each year to break the team down and build it back up into an iron-clad success.

Ohio State strength and conditioning coach Mickey Marotti can't monitor workouts, so he trusts the Buckeyes are doing the right thing on their own(Photo: Joe Maiorana/USA TODAY Sports)

Since the COVID-19 outbreak forced the cancellation of the final 12 days of spring practice and the closing of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, Marotti has been supervising by improvising in this new virtual world.

FaceTime just isn't the same, though, as in-your-face time. It's hard to be your drill sergeant best, dispensing discipline and being the macho motivator the Buckeyes love to hate, when you're sitting with your nose in a computer instead of up against the nose of a player you're cajoling into one last rep.

"It is, by far, the most difficult endeavor of my professional coaching career," Marotti said. "Obviously there are harsher things going on in the world right now, so I've got to put it in perspective. But at least in my little world of coaching it is so hard. In 31 or 32 years, I've never been away from a weight room for more than seven days at a time.

"All of a sudden you're Zooming and (doing) FaceTime. It's a tough time when you're in Zoom and a player is in front of you. You want to reach out and smack him in the back of the head or mess around with him or give him a hug ... some sort of greeting. But you can't. But I look at it as an opportunity to grow."

In a normal setting, he said, "you might have 30 players training at one time. It's easy to give them a message. They get it and move on. And then comes the next 30 and then you're done. Now it's 30 separate different message and 30 separate different calls and e-mails and texts.

"It's, no doubt, twice as busy as if we were in the Woody. At the end of the day, not that you weren't exhausted before, because you always are, but it's just like you're completely spent in a different way."

The players, scattered about the country, are improvising as well.

Marotti brought up a couple of examples. Offensive lineman Matthew Jones, who lives in Brooklyn near the epicenter of the coronavirus, didn’t have weight-training equipment at home. So he filled milk jugs with sand and dirt and used them as dumbbells. Tight end Jeremy Ruckert and his father built a squat rack out of wood in their Long Island home.

Offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere, who lives in Tampa, got too creative. He tried using the gutter on his house to do pull-ups. It collapsed.

"His mom wasn't too happy with that," Marotti said, "so we had to come up with a different plan for him. Others are pushing cars or (riding) mowers, whatever they can come up with."

Marotti has to work around not only a health crisis but NCAA restrictions and guidelines that at this time don't allow video monitoring of workouts and make physical activity strictly voluntary.

Ohio State was allowed to send the players resistance bands for body weight workouts and it's also been able to implement a strength and conditioning phone app with designed workouts by Marotti based on the fitness equipment available to each player.

"You hope everybody is doing what they need to do," Marotti said. "Our challenge to the team is that when this is over you're either going to be better or worse. You can't use the shutdown as an excuse. I know you don't have equipment. I know you don't have weights. I know it's raining. I know. I know. I know. I know. But at some point this thing's going to be over. You're either going to be better or worse."

Whenever players do return, Marotti expects 30% to be in peak physical condition and 50% in good shape, while the other 20% will have fallen behind. He said they'll have to be trained differently when they return.

"When I first FaceTimed (quarterback) Justin Fields he was walking around in circles in his living room," Marotti said. "I said, 'Justin, just sit down and relax, man.' As time has gone on as he's really gotten himself into a routine.

"That's what we preach to the players. You've got to get in a routine. You can't stay up all night playing video games. You can't be all over the place. You have to be in a pretty accountable routine.

"As time has gone on you can really see and hear the maturity of some guys. Nine, 10 weeks ago it was almost an anxious despair. Now it's actually kind of promising."